CHAPTER XITHE BREACH WIDENS
“Youjust wait a minute, Janice,” called out Marty, who did not see the school teacher. “I’ll run back and find Frank.”
Marty’s voice had great carrying power. Janice dared not look up at once, for she feared Nelson and Annette were looking down at her, and she had an unfortunate habit of blushing when she felt the least bit confused. She heard the girl laugh, and felt that she must be laughing at her. She did not hear Haley’s voice at all.
The moments sped by, and she could not appear to be engaged with the mechanism of the Kremlin forever. Marty did not return, and it seemed to her that he had been gone a very long time. Finally she plucked up her courage and, knowing that her cheeks were still ablaze, raised her eyes to the balcony where the city girl and the school teacher sat.
They were not looking in her direction at all, and Nelson seemed so much interested in what Annette was saying that he had neither eyes nor ears for anybody else.
Perhaps they could get away from the hotel—she and Marty—without being seen by the girl and Nelson. She hoped so—yet she felt a pang, too, that the teacher should seem so much enthralled by Annette’s light conversation. But Janice had not forgotten that Nelson had gone away for a fortnight without bidding her good-bye.
It was a peculiar situation. Never in her life had Janice Day experienced the least jealousy. She had never had a friend before whom she was not willing to share with everybody else. Perhaps it was because it was Annette that she was sorry Nelson Haley was acquainted with her.
She knew that Annette must be a very shallow, foolish girl from what she had seen of her, as well as from all she had heard. Of course, Frank, being her brother, had made out as good a case as possible for her; but even he had admitted qualities of character which would make her rather repellent to right-thinking people.
And to see Nelson Haley so evidently interested in her inconsequential chatter, and openly courting the city girl, smote Janice with a desire to save the school teacher from his own folly, if nothing else.
She wished to get away from the Inn without being seen by either of them. She was tempted to turn the car and start up the hill without Marty. She might stop at one of the shops and go in for something, as an excuse. But just as she hadthought up this scheme, she heard the voices of Marty and Frank. The young civil engineer was coming with the boy, and Janice was panicstricken.
For the first time since she had been running her car she fumbled and did the wrong thing. She meant to push the self-starter, and she made a jab at the horn button instead. The siren tooted a raucous note, proclaiming to everybody in the neighborhood that Janice was there.
“Dear me, that’s the girl that runs the automobile through the town,” she heard Annette Bowman proclaim.
“Why, it’s Janice!” responded Haley, and the girl in the auto heard his chair scrape upon the piazza flooring.
“Oh! do you know her? One of your pupils, I presume?” and the other girl’s voice suggested raillery. Janice could not hear what Nelson Haley said in reply. Marty, towing Frank Bowman, appeared from around the corner.
“Good afternoon, Miss Janice,” said the civil engineer, warmly. “Mart says you are going for a spin; it’s a lovely day for it.”
“Y-yes; it is,” admitted Janice. She was conscious of the observation of the two above; but she did not glance up there. If only Frank had not come out to the car! Then she might have spoken to Nelson, and the teacher might even have gone with her and Marty for a ride. Janice realized thatthere was something wrong between Haley and herself, yet she did not know how to straighten out the trouble.
Marty was pulling at her sleeve and whispering: “Say, Janice, ask him to go. He ain’t got a living thing to stop him.”
The suggestion smote the girl sharply with the thought that, in all probability, the innocent attentions Mr. Frank Bowman had shown her were the beginning of this estrangement between Nelson and herself. She desired very much to clear up the misunderstanding that had risen; yet she could not be ungrateful to the civil engineer who had been so kind to her.
Driven to it, knowing that the situation was bound to be worse if she did so, yet unable to see any way out of it, Janice turned and smiled upon Frank. In those few moments “Daddy’s little daughter” experienced emotions that would have surprised Daddy had he known about them. Afterward, when she came to think it over herself, Janice knew that she would never again feel so care-free and irresponsible as she had before this hour.
It was one of the situations in life that make for character building. She wanted Nelson, but she said, calling up a smile as well:
“Won’t you go with us, Mr. Bowman? We shall be back in time for supper.”
“Come along, Frank,” urged Marty, his faceaglow with the worship a boy often feels for a young man older than himself.
Nelson Haley had gone back to his chair. Janice felt it, although she had not raised her eyes to look at the couple above since Frank and Marty had appeared.
“We-ell,” said Frank, laughing. “If you think I won’t be in the way?”
“Aw, stop yer foolin’!” crowed Marty. “Hurry up—do! we ain’t got all day to wait for you!”
“Wait till I get a cap,” said the civil engineer, and turning swiftly he started up the hotel steps. Then he saw his sister and her companion.
“Oh, here you are, Annette!” he cried. “I’m going to take a little run with Mart and his cousin. And that reminds me—you must meet Janice Day. Come down here, Annette.”
He was evidently unacquainted with Nelson, for Janice saw him look at the school teacher curiously. Annette arose with an amused expression of countenance as though she were tolerating the requests of a small boy. Sisters do hold that attitude at times regarding their brothers.
“I should be charmed,” she said, in her drawling way. “This is my brother, Mr. Haley,” and she introduced the teacher easily. “I had no idea that this—ahem!—young lady whom I have seen in the motor-car was your Janice Day.” She arrived at the foot of the steps now and put out her hand to touchJanice’s gloved one. “Re’lly, I’ve been hearing so much about you from Frankie that I was quite prepared to find you very terrible. He seems to think you a remarkable girl.”
Not a word or a glance, not even a flicker of the rather sparce eyelashes, to show that Annette remembered the meeting on the road to Middletown! Yet Janice was convinced that the city girl had a very vivid remembrance of the occasion—was remembering it as she drawled her long speech, in fact, and that such remembrance pointed her tongue with venom. There was not two years’ difference in their ages; yet Annette did her best to make Janice seem a child.
Nelson bowed rather stiffly from the piazza; he did not come down to the car. Marty waved his hand to him and called out: “Hullo, Mr. Haley!” Janice could only bow and smile. Oh, yes, she could smile! The power of repressing her real feelings and of hiding her hurts under a mantle of pride had come to her in this time of trial.
Frank had shaken hands with Nelson perfunctorily and run on in for his cap. Now he came back and shoved his sister playfully aside as he stepped into the car beside Janice.
“Go away, little girl,” he said to Annette, laughing. “You’ll get run over. We’ll have more time for you some other day. And I want you and Janiceto be good friends—you’ll find lots to like about each other.”
Janice bade Annette good-day pleasantly, and immediately started the car. Naturally she was busy making the turn and starting up the hill; but she did not miss Annette’s languid smile and shrug as she returned to Nelson. A sudden rush of tears half blinded the troubled girl. High Street grew misty before her, and Marty yelled:
“Look out! you’ll run down ol’ Miz’ Cummings.”
The warning brought Janice to herself. She braced up, cleared her eyes with a little shake of her head, and began to chat to Frank while running the car with her usual care. But she could not forget Nelson Haley.
They went up High Street and turned into the Upper Middletown Road. Not far beyond the forks a load of hay came into view. The road was wide enough here for the hay and the automobile to pass; but when the car came up behind the load, and Janice tooted her horn, the driver paid not the least attention.
“Now, ain’t that mean of him?” cried Marty. “He hears ye, unless he’s as deaf as Uncle Abram Moles was, and they say he insisted on his ear-trumpet bein’ buried with him for fear he wouldn’t hear Gabriel on Resurrection Morn.”
“Why, Marty! that sounds awfully irreverent,” gasped Janice.
“It’s the truth, jest the same,” returned her cousin, complacently. “Uncle Abram was drefful deaf and no mistake. They tell about a city chap who come up here to take board with Uncle Abram’s people and who tried to be awful perlite to the old codger. One day at dinner the city chap refused a secon’ helpin’ and old Uncle Abram urged it on him.
“‘No, thanks,’ says the chap, ‘I’ve had sufficient.’
“‘Been a-fishin’?’ says Uncle Abram.
“The city chap shakes his head more emphatic and says: ‘I’ve had a-plenty.’
“‘Dew tell!’ says Uncle Abram. ‘Caught twenty!’
“At that the other feller gets some mad, and he rips out: ‘Ye old fule!’
“‘Broke yer pole?’ repeats Uncle Abram, quite innercent, and that closed the discussion.”
“Say!” cried Frank, laughing at Marty’s story. “We don’t want to crawl on behind this load of hay all the afternoon. What’s the matter with the fellow?”
“He’s wot they call a road hog,” proclaimed Marty. “Hey, you! get out of the way, will you?”
Janice tooted the horn again, but with no result. The driver of the hay wagon evidently had no intention of turning aside an inch from the middle of the road for the automobile. Of course, whenheavily loaded it is often difficult for a teamster to turn out; but the road rules demand it and the automobile party was quite within its rights when Janice signaled for a share of the roadway.
“Wait!” exclaimed Frank. “Isn’t there a wider place in the road right ahead, in front of Elder Concannon’s?”
“You’re right!” cried Marty. “We’ll fool him there. And crackey! I’d like to tell him what I think of him when we go by.”
“You be still, Marty,” was his cousin’s threat, “or I’ll not take you out again. We must not quarrel with the country people, no matter how mean they may be—— Why, see there! he’s turning right into the Elder’s barnyard gate.”
“By jinks!” ejaculated Marty, “it was the old Elder himself. No wonder he wouldn’t turn out for us—he hates these buzz-carts so. You’d oughter heard him layin’ down the law about ’em in Sunday School class last Sunday. Your ears ought to have burned, Janice.”
“I’m sorry the old gentleman does not approve of the car,” sighed Janice. “And we were just getting to be such good friends, too! Perhaps—perhaps Daddy’s present is going to bring me more trouble than pleasure, after all.”
But this last she said too low to be heard by her companions. She was thinking of the widening breach between herself and Nelson Haley.